Our monarchy always moves with the times

A new law of succession shows the adaptability that has helped our royalty
thrive for so long

Tomorrow, legislation to end male preference primogeniture in the royal succession will begin its journey through Parliament. The Succession to the Crown Bill will overturn centuries of tradition by introducing equal rights for both sexes. Yet radical changes to the rules are nothing new, especially when convenience – or more usually crisis – demands it.

Of course, females have long been allowed to inherit the throne when there is no surviving male successor, as the reigns of Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary II, Queen Anne, Queen Victoria and our present Queen demonstrate. It is also often overlooked that the rights of succession have historically been able to pass through the female line, albeit not without controversy.

The civil wars of the 15th century between the Houses of Lancaster and York, sparked off by Henry IV’s usurpation of Richard II, centred around which family had the stronger claim to the throne. The Duke of York asserted his legitimacy through Edward III’s second surviving son – yet importantly through the female line. Eventually the bloody battles that scarred the nation ended with Henry Tudor, arguably one of the weakest claimants to the throne, defeating Richard III at Bosworth Field.

As merely the grandson of the product of an illicit union between Henry V’s widow and a Welsh page, Henry was probably wise to claim the crown not through inheritance but merely by right of conquest. In passing an Act in 1485 asserting his rights as Henry VII, the important precedent of Parliament deciding the inheritance of the Crown was set. And in doing so, the long tradition of meddling with the succession began.

The 16th century was to prove a golden age for changing the succession whenever it suited the latest political expediency. Henry VIII passed not one but three Acts of Succession, each the result of yet another of the king’s marriages: first in 1533, Mary Tudor, Henry’s daughter with Catherine of Aragon, was disinherited in favour of Elizabeth, his child with Anne Boleyn. Then in 1536, another Act disinherited Elizabeth too, this time giving his son Edward full rights to the throne. Eventually a third Act in 1544 legitimated both daughters to succeed after the prince.

The Tudors were not content to leave the situation there. By this time, another (literally) burning issue had found its way on to the political stage: religion. As the first Protestant king, the thought of his Catholic sister Mary inheriting the throne was anathema to the young Edward VI. In 1553, as he lay on his deathbed aged just 15, Edward drew up his own “devise for the succession”.

He had hoped that the unborn male children of his cousin Lady Jane Grey might become his heirs, but with time running out, with a slip of the pen, Edward decreed that for the first time a woman would directly inherit the throne. The king’s will was not to last long. Deemed unlawful by the previous Succession Act, it was clear that from then on Parliament would have the final word over the succession. Yet when occasion demanded, the law could easily be passed over in silence.

When Elizabeth I died childless in 1603, if Henry VIII’s statute had been enforced correctly she should have been succeeded by Lady Anne Stanley. Yet the crown went instead to James VI of Scotland, Elizabeth’s first cousin twice removed, as James asserted that hereditary right was superior to statute.

The 17th century had its own particular views on the hereditary principle of monarchy, yet even after the Civil War and the Restoration, the thorny issue of how the succession should be decided in a crisis became even more complex. When James II fled the country in 1688, Parliament held that he had “abdicated the government” and that the throne was vacant. The throne was then offered not to James’s young son, but instead to his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, as joint rulers.

By now the politicians had wrestled the succession firmly into their grasp. The Bill of Rights in 1689 and the Act of Settlement in 1701 confirmed that it was for Parliament alone to determine the title to the throne. In fitting with the religious mania at the time, only Protestant descendants of Princess Sophia – the Electress of Hanover and granddaughter of James I — were eligible to succeed. Roman Catholics were specifically excluded from succession, with no sovereign able marry a Roman Catholic.

The Byzantine complexity of the by now British monarchy was laid bare when, with the death of Queen Anne in 1714, only one candidate, George of Hanover, was deemed eligible to succeed under the Act of Settlement, despite being 58th in line to the throne.

Perhaps with this in mind, our current generation of politicians might reflect on the constant tinkering with monarchy. For instance, the latest succession act will need to amend no less than the Bill of Rights 1689, the Act of Settlement 1701, the Union with Scotland Act 1707, the Coronation Oath Act 1688, Princess Sophia’s Precedence Act 1711, the Royal Marriages Act 1772, the Union with Ireland Act 1800, the Accession Declaration Act 1910, and the Regency Act 1937.

The history of the succession not only reflects Parliament’s increasing dominance over monarchical authority: it reveals that, in every age, the rules have always sought to conform to society’s whims and demands. The latest changes are no different. Indeed, they fit seamlessly into a tradition of monarchy adapting to the nation that it governs.

Chris Skidmore MP is author of 'Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors’ (Weidenfeld & Nicholson), to be published in May